New Graphic card- Computer wont boot.

[John Vere]

My computer is old-  HP Pavilion HPE i7 2600- Sandy Bridge- 1155 4x 3.40GHz.    and it doesn't have on board graphics, I came with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 520. It only has 1023 MB of memory. I just upgraded with 3 new 500GB Samsung Evo 870 SSD drives and from 10 GB to 32 GB of RAM. I thought I should also upgrade the video card to see if that would help when editing videos.  So because this computer is doomed to be shelved next year or in the fall I didn't want to spend to much so I bought a Zotak GT 730 with 4 GB memory $125. 

I pulled the old card and put the new one in and the computer just stalls at the Blue bootup screen that usually flashes for about 5 seconds. It say's press ESC to open settings. But even that does nothing. Only thing that makes a change is CRT/ALT/DEL which just changes the screen from blue to black. Meanwhile there is a lot of beeps. One beep mostly but sometimes multiple beeps. Eventually the screen goes dead. But the fact there is a screen tells me the card is actually working and must be seated properly. It is a very basic card , passive cooling and no power supply needed. 

Here things I tried. 

I installed the old card. Then I opened settings ( BIOS?) and set it to default. I noticed the boot order is set to Windows Boot manager. Computer boots and runs normally. 

I disconnected all the DATA drives and only left the DVD drive and the C drive. I thought about installing the driver and decided that was not a good idea. 

I put the new card back in. 

It came with a DVD  disk which I put in the drive. The drive doesn't spin up on boot. 

Then a very weird idea came to me but that didn't work either. The Computer was originally W7 so I grabbed a blank SSD drive and put my W7 install disk in the DVD drive. My thinking was this is what would be normal for a brand new build, right? DVD still didn't spin. Blue start up screen, ESC still not opening Settings. 

I tried re starting about 20 times. I even unplugged it etc. 

Should I send this card back and try something else?  Or it this a HP weird bios thing?  The bios seems very bare bones to me. 

 

[HIBI]

The BEEP sounds at boot may be a clue to the problem, so please count the BEEP sounds and refer to the BIOS manual.

I am not a PC expert, but it sounds like a legacy or UEFI mode problem in the BIOS.

[Xoo]

UEFI vs legacy BIOS?

[mettelus]

The blinks/beeps are codes that the BIOS is giving you. Need to check the manual to see what those mean for certain. It is possible that the new card is actually bad (don't rule this out since you swapped the old back in and it works), but also that it is not compatible with HP... probably what the BIOS codes are telling you.

Some laptops have VERY proprietary architectures in them (HP, DELL, and that lot), so research that particular machine for more info. A guy at work wanted to upgrade RAM in an HP and it was a no dice venture because the original RAM was actually soldered in (no socket)... profile was so thin that the other "socket" couldn't take anything anyway. Same machine also had an epic fail from running Iobit's Driver Booster... the drivers on that machine were required to be HP or they didn't work.

Edited June 16, 2023 by mettelus

[John Vere]

Thanks everyone  I figured as much.  After reading these comments I think I'll send it back. I would have no problem figuring this out if it was a computer I built myself.  It seems HP actually hides the bios from you and there's only a dummied down systems screen..  in the user manual they want you to send it in to the factory.  It works real good for Cakewalk just that in Movie Maker ( Vegas)  video editor the preview was super jerky. I have to render the movie to actually see how things like zooming and transitions turned out. 

It was mostly only one beep at random. But it's not mission critical for this old machine. One more reason to save up for a new one which I will build myself to get the components I need. 

Updated- Amazon already approved the return. No questions asked.  I just printed the return label. 

[Starship Krupa]

21 hours ago, JohnnyV said:

I bought a Zotak GT 730 with 4 GB memory $125. 

Your Pavilion doesn't support UEFI BIOS, so upgrading the video card ain't happening.

Really, though, it's actually a good thing that it didn't work, because this is a much better card for less money, and also passively cooled:

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-GeForce-GDDR5-Graphics-GT1030-2G-CSM/dp/B0716ZH99K

There's no longer any reason to struggle with systems this old when there are deals like this around:

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Latitude-Business-Certified-Refurbished/dp/B07K6YG7YY

That makes it about $200 total (including the GT 1030) for a computer that would be a video editing powerhouse compared to your current setup. And if you get a brand new system (which I would never do, I shop used and refurbished), the GT 1030 is a worthy card.

(even without the card, using the onboard graphics on the Dell would be better than what you have now)

I use Vegas Pro and my GT 1030 flies with that, I also game with it and it's run every title I've thrown at it with aplomb.

Here's a comparison. Note how the GT 1030's column uses the words "hugely faster" and "hugely better" for every spec.

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GT-1030-vs-Nvidia-GeForce-GT-730/m283726vsm12582

Turn the Pavilion into a network server.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Starship Krupa

[mettelus]

I have never been a fan of laptops, but they do serve a purpose for portability/field work. Getting too carried away on upgrading one can become cost-prohibitive to be sure. Since they are crammed so tight, the components are at a thermal disadvantage right away. As you do video work, a desktop even a couple or more gens out of "bleeding edge" is going to pack a lot more bang for the buck and be more useful longer.

I am glad you were able to return the card without issues. Unless you "need" better graphics, it might be something to forget about on that HP and focus for its eventual replacement.

[Starship Krupa]

32 minutes ago, mettelus said:

I have never been a fan of laptops, but they do serve a purpose for portability/field work. Getting too carried away on upgrading one can become cost-prohibitive to be sure.

A HP Pavilion i7 2600 is a desktop/tower.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Starship Krupa

[John Vere]

14 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Really, though, it's actually a good thing that it didn't work, because this is a much better card for less money, and also passively cooled:

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-GeForce-GDDR5-Graphics-GT1030-2G-CSM/dp/B0716ZH99K

Question- would THIS card work in the Pavilion? One thing I didn't mention is that the currant Video card is fan cooled and real noisy. A Passive card is defiantly what I was looking at. I passed on the one you posted because I didn't think going from 1 GB to 2 GB would make much difference but it would certainly get rid if the terrible fan noise. 

I actually went to order the Dell you linked and it added a Canadian surcharge which put the price at $230 Can. So I chickened out. But I will still look into that. I usually build my own because any off the self computer will have nothing but underbuilt components that will then need upgrading. But that was years ago since I've done this so possibly things have changed. 

I have a few Laptops and personally I would never use one as a main DAW. I have an Acer I5 quad core 3.4 with 16 GB RAM and 2 x 240GB SSD drives. It's my portable studio. But it really doesn't work at all for video editing. Screen captures with OBS on it are jerky. 

[Starship Krupa]

4 hours ago, JohnnyV said:

would THIS card work in the Pavilion?

Unfortunately, no, which is why I sourced you the Optiplex. Modern graphics cards require the computer to boot from the UEFI BIOS, which loads from the system drive rather than motherboard ROM.

A Dell Optiplex 7010 with an i7-3770 was my main DAW/NLE rig until about a year ago, and would still be working fine had I not found a killer deal on a motherboard. It has a GTX550Ti in it, which was a pretty powerful GPU in its day (and still holds up), but it wasn't unusable when using the onboard graphics.

Dells are known for being very well-built. As for being upgradeable, the only thing to watch out for is whether the graphics card you want doesn't have power requirements that exceed the power supply's capacity. Dells, like HP's, use power supplies with proprietary connectors, which makes them more difficult to swap for beefier components.

The GT 1030 has very low power requirements, but as I said, the onboard graphics of a newer i5 or i7 will knock the sox off your current GT 520 anyway. BTW, if you haven't taken an air blaster can to the inside of the HP lately, that can help with noisy fan syndrome and may help the computer run faster. Just be sure to take it outside first!

You may be able to find a Canadian source of refurbished Dells. I think Best Buy also sells them. Just Google "refurbished Optiplex" and see what comes up. I can help vet whatever you find. I recently helped Larry Jones take the refurbished Dell path and he's very happy with the results.

[John Vere]

Thanks I was going to try Amazon.ca. I have blown lots of air on that stupid fan and even gave it a drop of lubricant it’s just a POS. 

[Starship Krupa]

2 hours ago, JohnnyV said:

I was going to try Amazon.ca

Check PM for a possible alternative. ?

Another benefit you'll appreciate from updating to a later processor is the presence of the higher levels of extended multimedia instructions. I started to have some IK Multimedia plug-ins refuse to run on my old notebook, which had a 2nd-generation i7. They said they needed the multimedia instruction set to run and that was that.

I'm not sure how the presence of those extensions affects Vegas NLE's and video rendering, but it sure can't hurt.